Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Earth

“Well, don’t you know you must pay for warm-bloodedness? To maintain your temperature above that of your surroundings, you must expend energy far more wastefully than a tortoise must. You must be eating almost constantly so that you can pour energy into your body as quickly as it leaks out. You would starve far more quickly than a tortoise would, and die more quickly, too. Would you rather be a tortoise, and live more slowly and longer? Or would you rather pay the price and be a quick-moving, quick-sensing, thinking organism?”

“Is this a true analogy, Bliss?”

“No, Trevize, for the situation with Gaia is more favorable. We don’t expend unusual quantities of energy when we are compactly together. It is only when part of Gaia is at hyperspatial distances from the rest of Gaia that energy expenditure rises. —And remember that what you have voted for is not merely a larger Gaia, not just a larger individual world. You have decided for Galaxia, for a vast complex of worlds. Anywhere in the Galaxy, you will be part of Galaxia and you will be closely surrounded by parts of something that extends from each interstellar atom to the central black hole. It would then require small amounts of energy to remain a whole. No part would be at any great distance from all other parts. It is all this you have decided for, Trevize. How can you doubt that you have chosen well?”

Trevize’s head was bent in thought. Finally, he looked up and said, “I may have chosen well, but I must be convinced of that. The decision I have made is the most important in the history of humanity and it is not enough that it be a good one. I must know it to be a good one.”

“What more do you need than what I have told you?”

“I don’t know, but I will find it on Earth.” He spoke with absolute conviction.

Pelorat said, “Golan, the star shows a disc.”

It did. The computer, busy about its own affairs and not the least concerned with any discussion that might swirl about it, had been approaching the star in stages, and had reached the distance Trevize had set for it.

They continued to be well outside the planetary plane and the computer split the screen to show each of three small inner planets.

It was the innermost that had a surface temperature in the liquid-water range, and that had an oxygen atmosphere as well. Trevize waited for its orbit to be computed and the first crude estimate seemed reasonable. He kept that computation going, for the longer the planetary movement was observed, the more accurate the computation of its orbital elements.

Trevize said quite calmly, “We have a habitable planet in view. Very likely habitable.”

“Ah.” Pelorat looked as nearly delighted as his solemn expression would allow.

“I’m afraid, though,” said Trevize, “that there’s no giant satellite. In fact, no satellite of any kind has been detected so far. So it isn’t Earth. At least, not if we go by tradition.”

“Don’t worry about that, Golan.” said Pelorat. “I rather suspected we weren’t going to encounter Earth here when I saw that neither of the gas giants had an unusual ring system.”

“Very well, then,” said Trevize. “The next step is to find out the nature of the life inhabiting it. From the fact that it has an oxygen atmosphere, we can be absolutely certain that there is plant life upon it, but—”

“Animal life, too,” said Bliss abruptly. “And in quantity.”

“What?” Trevize turned to her.

“I can sense it. Only faintly at this distance, but the planet is unquestionably not only habitable, but inhabited.”

The Far Star was in polar orbit about the Forbidden World, at a distance great enough to keep the orbital period at a little in excess of six days. Trevize seemed in no hurry to come out of orbit.

“Since the planet is inhabited,” he explained, “and since, according to Deniador, it was once inhabited by human beings who were technologically advanced and who represent a first wave of Settlers—the so-called Spacers—they may be technologically advanced still and may have no great love for us of the second wave who have replaced them. I would like them to show themselves, so that we can learn a little about them before risking a landing.”

“They may not know we are here,” said Pelorat.

“ We would, if the situation were reversed. I must assume, then, that, if they exist, they are likely to try to make contact with us. They might even want to come out and get us.”

“But if they did come out after us and were technologically advanced, we might be helpless to—”

“I can’t believe that,” said Trevize. “Technological advancement is not necessarily all one piece. They might conceivably be far beyond us in some ways, but it’s clear they don’t indulge in interstellar travel. It is we, not they, who have settled the Galaxy, and in all the history of the Empire, I know of nothing that would indicate that they left their worlds and made themselves evident to us. If they haven’t been space traveling, how could they be expected to have made serious advances in astronautics? And if they haven’t, they can’t possibly have anything like a gravitic ship. We may be essentially unarmed but even if they come lumbering after us with a battleship, they couldn’t possibly catch us. —No, we wouldn’t be helpless.”

“Their advance may be in mentalics. It may be that the Mule was a Spacer—”

Trevize shrugged in clear irritation. “The Mule can’t be everything. The Gaians have described him as an aberrant Gaian. He’s also been considered a random mutant.”

Pelorat said, “To be sure, there have also been speculations—not taken very seriously, of course—that he was a mechanical artifact. A robot, in other words, though that word wasn’t used.”

“If there is something that seems mentally dangerous, we will have to depend on Bliss to neutralize that. She can— Is she asleep now, by the way?”

“She has been,” said Pelorat, “but she was stirring when I came out here.”

“Stirring, was she? Well, she’ll have to be awake on short notice if anything starts happening. You’ll have to see to that, Janov.”

“Yes, Golan,” said Pelorat quietly.

Trevize shifted his attention to the computer. “One thing that bothers me are the entry stations. Ordinarily, they are a sure sign of a planet inhabited by human beings with a high technology. But these—”

“Is there something wrong with them?”

“Several things. In the first place, they’re very archaic. They might be thousands of years old. In the second, there’s no radiation but thermals.”

“What are thermals?”

“Thermal radiation is given off by any object warmer than its surroundings. It’s a familiar signature that everything yields and it consists of a broad band of radiation following a fixed pattern depending on temperature. That is what the entry stations are radiating. If there are working human devices aboard the stations, there is bound to be a leakage of nonthermal, nonrandom radiation. Since only thermals are present we can assume that either the stations are empty, and have been, perhaps, for thousands of years; or, if occupied, it is by people with a technology so advanced in this direction that they leak no radiation.”

“Perhaps,” said Pelorat, “the planet has a high civilization, but the entry stations are empty because the planet has been left so strictly alone for so long by our kind of Settlers that they are no longer concerned about any approach.”

“Perhaps. —Or perhaps it is a lure of some sort.”

Bliss entered, and Trevize, noting her out of the corner of his eyes, said grumpily, “Yes, here we are.”